What does AEFW damage look like?

[aqua80]

Originally Posted by asylumdown

I'm following the thread on Reef Central about RPS all out. I'm going to buy some, and hopefully the guy who's posting close up pictures of the eggs will report that they've all been killed by this treatment..

hehe that guy is me
for now after 8 days eggs seems intact... we'll see if they hatch...

I lost a couple of frags from the initial attack but after that everything is doing great, even if I do see some bite marks here and there and some adults when blasting....

In fact I believe there's many more AEFW tanks out there that people just don't know they have it... If you don't do QT on every coral you get you will have them someday (or you already have them...)
I dip every coral I put in my tank with coral rx and revive, removing the original plug etc... and still got them...

my tank is not doing so bad with them for the last 8 months (at least) :



melanurus wrasse, yellow wrasse and sixline are my friends...

but ReefBum is (was) the best looking tank with AEFW for sure :

[asylumdown]

oooh, you're Canadian?! Sweet, I'm really looking forward to the long term outcome of your test. My suspicion is that it won't kill the eggs of AEFW, the wording on the promotional materials is too vague. They list all the things that it kills, and then says in a blanket statement 'and kill the eggs too!'. It very likely kills the eggs of some of the things that All Out treats, but they very specifically never say 'kills AEFW and their eggs', which in my opinion was a very intentional wording choice.

However, the product does seem incredible effective at killing everything else. I only hope I can save some of my acropora crabs. I love those little guys, I have one in every colony large enough to house one.

[Zoaelite]

I don't have experience with this matter but has anyone tried the nudibranch Chelidonura varians?

[Reef Pilot]

If you go fallow with acros, do the AEFW's die off in the tank? I know this may not be practical for most, and there are always acro bits that break off, and end up hidden in the rocks at the back of the tank somewhere. But just curious.

[Zoaelite]

Probably not the best suggestion as you have flow that would make hurricane Katrina jealous, but in general have these been used?

[asylumdown]

I actually bought one of those nudibranchs once to control red flatworms (people call them planaria, but they're flatworms). It was cool watching him vacuum up the little flatworms, but in a 275 gallon tank with 9 or 10 million flatworms, there wasn't a whole lot he could do. I finally just dosed flatworm exit, and watched my tank do an impression of the sacking of Rome for an hour. I'm pretty sure the flatworm exit either killed the nudi, or it starved due to lack of food afterwards. I wouldn't be against trying it again, but the problem is supply - they're not the easiest nudibranch's to come by, and I think you'd need them in pretty large numbers to do any good. Also, I'm not sure how the food situation would work - do they even eat AEFW? If so, and you've only got a small population, it seems like the nudi might starve before he gets them all, and if you've also got a co-infestation with a preferred food source that could sustain the nudi, wouldn't it just eat those instead?

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by Reef Pilot

If you go fallow with acros, do the AEFW's die off in the tank? I know this may not be practical for most, and there are always acro bits that break off, and end up hidden in the rocks at the back of the tank somewhere. But just curious.

They're obligate acro predators, so yes, they'd starve with no food. It looks like their egg's take around 21 days to hatch, and then who knows how long for them to starve to death.

[asylumdown]

I'm starting to see AEFW damage everywhere, but I think it might just be my imagination. I'm getting really paranoid because I just realized that one of my larger, healthier acro colonies that was growing all gangbuster style before I left for mexico is completely, 100% dead. I didn't notice until this morning because it's in a depression of one of my rocks, and a birdsnest colony has grown large enough to make it hard to see.

I don't think that flatworms can take down and entire colony that fast, but I have three different colonies of that same species/colour morph (proof you need to vary the stores you buy coral from) and it's the only that's dead. The only other thing that I can think might have killed it was a temperature spike, my Apex tells me that my tank hit 27.6 degrees the day before I came home from Mexico - it must have been really sunny and warm outside for the house to have gotten so warm inside. Sometimes I regret the choice to put in floor to ceiling windows along the south wall of our house...

[asylumdown]

Well the good news is that after dipping 50% of my acropora in Coral RX (I was getting less and less comfortable waiting for the All Out to arrive), I've not found a single flatworm. The bad news is that I discovered montipora eating nudibranchs in the process.

Fml. This might be the end of me as a reefer. I don't have the time to deal with two problems like this. If that coral that came on my rock truly is montipora, there's nothing I can do about the nudibranchs. Removing all of the coral on the rocks will require removing 50% of my rock.

[Reef Pilot]

Don't remember reading about the conclusion of this. Did you eventually beat the AEFW infestation and how, or are you just living with it?